Johnson Becomes Face, and So Much More, of Bid for the Dodgers

For a moment, imagine Magic Johnson, the symbol of Showtime, as a part-owner and the public face of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He stands outside Dodger Stadium greeting fans numbed by the Frank McCourt era. He sits by the Dodgers’ dugout listening to fans telling him how to improve the team.

He appears on pregame shows. He grills Dodger Dogs.

He calls disgruntled season ticket-holders; maybe he even visits them at home.

Johnson, the former Lakers great, is part of a group that hopes to buy the Dodgers — a basketball icon looking to restore a baseball team’s former luster. If he succeeds, he would be executing a sports crossover unlike other athletes-turned-owners. Michael Jordan stayed with basketball when he acquired the Charlotte Bobcats. Nolan Ryan stuck to baseball as a part-owner of the Texas Rangers. And Mario Lemieux was still playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins when he converted salary owed him into a stake as a co-owner.

But with only Little League in Lansing, Mich., and softball experience on his résumé, Johnson is not the baseball business maven in his group. That is Stan Kasten, the former president of the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals, who first contacted Johnson about joining a group with Mark Walter, the president of Guggenheim Partners, a private financial services company based in Chicago.

Walter, a Cubs fan, is recruiting partners within the firm and outside investors to finance the bid.

Johnson — whose years with the Lakers coincided with Fernandomania and two World Series titles at Chavez Ravine — is in the group for his enormous local profile, his enthusiasm, his millions of dollars and his business experience. He has owned Starbucks franchises and movie theaters, and has hedge funds and real estate funds, T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants, a food service company, a work-force staffing firm and part-ownership of the Dayton Dragons, a Class A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds.

Last year, he sold his 4.5 percent stake in the Lakers for more than $27 million to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who might finance a Dodgers bid with some of the $7 billion that Forbes magazine said he is worth. Johnson has also been involved in efforts to bring an N.F.L. team back to Los Angeles.

“Magic’s been incredibly popular in L.A. and has been since the day he got here,” said Steve Springer, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer who collaborated on the autobiography of Fred Claire, a former Dodgers general manager who is bidding on the team. “People rallied around him when he was a winning and when he was HIV positive. He even flirted with running for mayor.”

Photo

Magic Johnson is in a group that includes the ex-baseball executive Stan Kasten.Credit
Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency

He added that Johnson is more popular than two former Dodgers, Orel Hershiser and Steve Garvey, who are also expected to bid on the team.

Marty Kaplan, the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the University of Southern California, said that few athletes embodied winning as much as Johnson did. That pedigree, so evident in his five N.B.A. titles as the Lakers’ point guard, would be imported to Dodger Stadium. Johnson’s ebullience would replace McCourt’s tight-lipped grimness.

“Is it possible to care about winning more than Magic?” Kaplan asked. “This is brilliant casting. I can’t think of somebody who people can invest hope for the future in more than Magic.” He added: “He doesn’t need the prestige ownership would give him. He’s already got that. He’s not marrying up to do this.”

Johnson and his team would not be the only suitor capable of rescuing the Dodgers. Peter O’Malley, the former owner, brings the prestige of his family’s 47-year stewardship of the franchise. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, offers energy and intensity. Dennis Gilbert, the former player agent who now works for the Chicago White Sox, is close to Commissioner Bud Selig and was an early and acceptable bidder for the Rangers. Hershiser and Garvey bring a pairing from the team’s not-so-distant glory days.

“Dodger fans are clamoring for stability,” said David Carter, the director of the sports business institute at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, “and they can’t wait to have an owner who they feel has a vested interest in what they believe is their team. He has extraordinary good will, his media relations are fantastic and he’s well-connected throughout the region, including City Hall.”

But does a Johnson-led group have any advantage?

It is too early to tell. The Dodgers’ investment banker, Blackstone Advisory Partners, has not sent out the offering book on the team that will start the bidding, which will be overseen by a federal bankruptcy court judge. McCourt placed the team in bankruptcy last June.

Not all the potential bidders have spoken publicly and none of them have been as open as Johnson. Upon announcing his bid last week, he publicly positioned himself as a McCourt alternative whom McCourt should like. Indeed, Johnson offered the beleaguered McCourt the type of praise that, of late, he probably could not find outside his own court filings.

“Frank McCourt did some things right and I wanted to recognize those things,” Johnson told The Los Angeles Times. “He put money into the ballpark, he put money into the community, he signed Matt Kemp, the cupboard is not bare, and I wanted him to know that I respected and appreciated all of that.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 7, 2011, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Johnson Becomes Face, And So Much More, Of Bid for the Dodgers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe